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    Ground Rules for Writers: Your Easy Writing Reference Series, #1
    Ground Rules for Writers: Your Easy Writing Reference Series, #1
    Ground Rules for Writers: Your Easy Writing Reference Series, #1
    Ebook110 pages1 hour

    Ground Rules for Writers: Your Easy Writing Reference Series, #1

    By Sheryl Wright and Susan Ball

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    About this ebook

    A Quick and Easy Reference Guide for All the Painful Punctuation, Ghastly Grammar, and Pesky Sound Alike Words, Fracking Up Your Work!

    Description:

    The Ground Rules for Writers is a quick and easy reference guide for writing your best fiction or non-fiction. This guide is an excellent resource for solving all the pesky details messing up your hard work.

    Fully Indexed with a detailed lists of common words that are confusing to use, and may be encountered in reading and speech.

    The Ground Rules for Writers provides strategies for differentiating words that are close in meaning, usage, and sound. There are also rules for non-words that could puzzle anyone, even your grade two spelling teacher!

    Punctuation may be at risk of extinction, but misplaced periods or commas can make your writing difficult to read or even appear unskilled. Check out our handy rules and put the punctuation exactly where it belongs.

    The Ground Rules for Writers also delivers key rules for great Composition, enabling you to create your work with proper word usage and sentence structure. The truth is, the fewer grammatical mistakes, the better your readers will understand your work and the more they will enjoy your effort!

    The Ground Rules for Writers is suitable reference text for anyone who has been out of school for some time or where English is a second language.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFoundry Guides
    Release dateOct 6, 2016
    ISBN9780994025739
    Ground Rules for Writers: Your Easy Writing Reference Series, #1

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      Book preview

      Ground Rules for Writers - Sheryl Wright

      Contributors

      Susan Ball is a skilled and experienced Self-Love Activist, Life Coach and NLP Practitioner, as well as being a survivor of abuse. She brings intuition along with proven strategies to her work, and much to her clients’ delight. She works with all those who are ready to transition into their fearless story. To fall deeply, madly in love with themselves so they can live fulfilling and confident lives. Susan is a regular contributor to Thrive: Live Life Fearlessly. She dreams of living off the grid in her ‘Tiny Wrecky House’.

      susan@susanball.ca

      Sheryl Wright is the author of five works of fiction including the award winning Contrary Warriors series and Don’t Let Go. Her nonfiction work includes Primers on several Supply Chain Management Software systems and FAA Standards for Flight Training Devices. While most of her focus today is on writing fiction, the Ground Rules for Writers emerged from the cheat notes she compiled over her lengthy career. After sharing her notes with several emerging writers, she was encouraged to release this volume.

      me@sherylwright.com

      Curtis Newbold, The Visual Communication Guy: Design, Writing, and Teaching Resources, All in One Place! provided the 15 Punctuation Marks illustration. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one illustration ropes them all in. For an HD copy of this or other helpful illustrations, please visit his website:

      Sarah Lever, is the artistic force driving Vestra Design: http://vestradesign,com

      If you find this book helpful consider leaving a review with your online retailer or on our website at http://foundryguides.com

      Introduction

      People started studying grammar long, long ago. Oops! Wrong story! Forget the galaxy far, far away. This story purportedly starts in ancient Greece, over two and a half millennia ago, when western students began the formal study of sentence structure along with philosophy and the arts. From then on, students have found it beneficial to study spelling, subject-verb agreement, punctuation, the parts of speech, and sentence patterns.

      Grammar, oh grammar, how dare you frack me up!

      Why is that? Great speaking and writing skills—communication skills—are intrinsic to every facet of academics, business, and everyday life. If you intend to succeed in any career, it’s a good bet you need to get this right.

      This book is divided into three areas of challenge for every writer: First we tame the ‘nyms or all the sound alike and close in meaning words. As painful as this is, you need to get these right. Editors are detail people by nature and often use these common and simple mistakes to gauge more than your skill but your own dedication. A few of these goofs can often mean the difference between acceptance and rejection! The remaining chapters capture the keys to getting your punctuation just right. Grammar is covered in the last chapter.

      While this book is not intended to replace any professional dissertation on English Grammar, it will cover the important aspects you need to know and wake those dormant lessons from school days long past.

      The Words that We Love to Mess Up

      These are common words that are confusing to use, and may be encountered in reading and speech. Review our strategies for differentiating words that are close in meaning, usage, and sound. There are also rules for non-words that could puzzle anyone, even your grade two spelling teacher. No, we didn’t make these up!

      Achieving the Perfect Punctuation in your Writing

      A lot of people take proper punctuation for granted, but misplaced periods or commas have been known to cause serious scandals and may have even sparked a few wars! So, don’t just haphazardly throw around dashes, dots and the kitchen sink when you're not sure where they fit. Check out our handy rules and put the punctuation exactly where it belongs.

      Oh the horror, oops Oh the Grammar!

      These are key rules, enabling you to formulate great compositions with proper word usage and sentence structure. The truth is, the fewer grammatical mistakes, the better your reader will understand your work and the more respected your efforts. It’s not brain surgery but it can feel like someone’s pulling your hair out!

      Chapter One: The Words We Love to Mess Up

      This chapter deals with spelling and correct word usage. The most basic unit of language is the word. They are the building blocks of communications. Imagine your vocabulary as a huge box of Lego® blocks. One word equals one block! With each block you stick together, you begin to bring your creations, your verbal musing, to life. We build sentences, paragraphs, essays, and novels using one block at a time. Using the wrong word rarely causes the world to end but it can be embarrassing.

      The English language is vast yet most speakers rely on only a limited vocabulary to get through life. Expanding your vocabulary is tantamount to succeeding but using common words correctly is far more important. Learning to express yourself simply and fittingly in a variety of ways through all the words you know should be your prerequisite. Writers who master the basics rarely resort to fancy language and flowers prose to deliver their point.

      In This Chapter

      Section One is All the ‘Close but No Cigar’ Words. These are words somewhat related to one another, but not the same. There are no rewards for using these words incorrectly.

      Section Two contains a list of Sound Alike Words. You guessed it, words that sound the same but mean completely different things. Like the words in Section One, these share similar properties, but using them inappropriately could make your work hard to understand or appear amateurish. Avoiding these mistakes

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